An extended scattering kernel formalism for multi-scale gas–surface dynamics

Gas–particle interactions with non-absorbing surfaces are commonly described using the scattering-kernel formalism. In this framework, an operator K maps incident velocity distributions to reflected velocity distributions. The operator is self-adjoint and has norm ||K||=1 in an L2 space weighted by the three-dimensional Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution, and must satisfy non-negativity, normalization, and reciprocity. In standard formulations, K represents the aggregate effect of all gas–surface interaction mechanisms through a single operator, without distinguishing the physical scales at which these mechanisms occur. For gas scattering from a rough surface, however, it is advantageous to separate geometric effects associated with distinct roughness scales from the underlying thermochemical processes occurring at the atomic scale. We, therefore, introduce a roughness-based extension of the scattering-kernel formalism, in which a local kernel is successively lifted to larger scales via single- and multi-reflection operators associated with statistically defined surface morphologies. We derive sufficient conditions under which the resulting global kernels preserve reciprocity, normalization, and non-negativity whenever these properties hold for the smallest-scale kernel. We further show that these constructions define operators on the space of scattering kernels and establish the associated multi-scale composition laws that allow independent roughness contributions to be combined recursively. The resulting framework provides a general basis for modeling gas–surface scattering on rough surfaces with arbitrary scale decompositions.